wise, with your love? And you do love me, Helen?' said I,
not doubting the fact, but wishing to hear it confirmed by her own
acknowledgment. 'If you loved as I do,' she earnestly replied, 'you
would not have so nearly lost me--these scruples of false delicacy and
pride would never thus have troubled you--you would have seen that the
greatest worldly distinctions and discrepancies of rank, birth, and
fortune are as dust in the balance compared with the unity of accordant
thoughts and feelings, and truly loving, sympathising hearts and souls.'

'But this is too much happiness,' said I, embracing her again; 'I have
not deserved it, Helen--I dare not believe in such felicity: and the
longer I have to wait, the greater will be my dread that something will
intervene to snatch you from me--and think, a thousand things may happen
in a year!--I shall be in one long fever of restless terror and
impatience all the time. And besides, winter is such a dreary season.'

'I thought so too,' replied she gravely: 'I would not be married in
winter--in December, at least,' she added, with a shudder--for in that
month had occurred both the ill-starred marriage that had bound her to
her former husband, and the terrible death that released her--'and
therefore I said another year, in spring.'

'Next spring?'

'No, no--next autumn, perhaps.'

'Summer, then?'

'Well, the close of summer. There now! be satisfied.'

While she was speaking Arthur re-entered the room--good boy for keeping
out so long.

'Mamma, I couldn't find the book in either of the places you told me to
look for it' (there was a conscious something in mamma's smile that
seemed to say, 'No, dear, I knew you could not'), 'but Rachel got it for
me at last. Look, Mr. Markham, a natural history, with all kinds of
birds and beasts in it, and the reading as nice as the pictures!'

In great good humour I sat down to examine the book, and drew the little
fellow between my knees. Had he come a minute before I should have
received him less graciously, but now I affectionately stroked his
curling looks, and even kissed his ivory forehead: he was my own Helen's
son, and therefore mine; and as such I have ever since regarded him.
That pretty child is now a fine young man: he has realised his mother's
brightest expectations, and is at present residing in Grassdale Manor
with his young wife--the merry little Helen Hattersley of yore.

I had not looked through half the book befor